Cryptocurrency’s Trek Into Peru

Peru’s road to cryptocurrency adoption has been a long time coming. One could even say that it’s overdue. However, since the end of the last year, cryptocurrency trades have only grown in volume throughout the Land of the Incas, with more exchanges opting to set up camp there in recent months.

At the same time, Peru presents a novel challenge to crypto markets due to its current lack of widespread banking integration, making the country more fertile than most for direct cryptocurrency adoption.

Slow start

In 2014 a startup contest, Digital Bank LatAM, was held in Peru with the aim of finding promising projects that could improve the banking industry. Only one cryptocurrency-based project entered the competition, and it was not well received.

Ripe for crypto?

According to financial researchers, RFi Group, in 2017 around 70% of Peruvian citizens were either unbanked or underbanked, with only 30% having regular access to a bank account. An initiative has since been launched which aims to raise that number to 75% by 2021, but how much of that will be within the traditional banking sector, and how much will be in the form of a private wallet key?

Breaking records

The Peer-to-Peer cryptocurrency exchange, LocalBitcoins, showed a record month for crypto transactions in November 2017, as reported by CryptoCoin.News. Peru was one of the countries, along with Chile and Argentina which saw unprecedented growth in its P2P crypto trades, and it found itself competing with the likes of Norway, Czech Republic, and the United Arab Emirates.

PeruCoin (PRU)

Peru can join numerous nations and regions, such as Scotland, Naples, and Venezuela in having its own national cryptocurrency with the PeruCoin (PRU).